What Does Google Want?

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It mocks you, it taunts you, it insults youÖit ignores you. Itís Google, the Internetís most popular (and therefore, most powerful) search engine. And no matter what you do or how you change your site, you canít seem to make it to the top of this engineís search results. Want to boost your ranking and get more traffic? Itís time to answer that new-age question: what does Google want?

How Google Works

Google appeals to Internet users on many levels. For one, itís incredibly easy to use -- simply type in the words associated with what youíre looking for and youíre good to go. Google also offers a simple, uncluttered page design thatís not graphically harsh. Google offers a type of modern-world magic; you tell it what you want (type in a search string) and it answers the call (almost instantly provides a list of links to Web sites where that search term can be found).

Sounds simple, right? With Google, indeed with any search engine, thereís a whole lot going on behind the scenes. In order to return an accurate list of results, Google must first take your search and then scan Google-enabled Web pages for the exact phrase. Some sites will repeat this phrase more times than others. These sites will be displayed on the results pages first, or higher up on the list. Sadly, this process is not as cut and dried as it may seem.

Google is Smarter Than You Think

If all Google did was search Web pages for a repeated phrase and then give out ranks accordingly, youíd always be finding sites where a single word or phrase is repeated a hundred times in succession. Youíd never find readable text; you'd find jumbled words instead. Many sites used to ďtrickĒ search engines in just this way, but Google is much smarter than that.

Google actually scans all of a siteís content, not just for the words in the search string but the surrounding text as well. If the rest of the text seems to be a collection of random words, rather than sensible content, the page in question will not enjoy a higher rank; Google will give it a lower slot on the list.

In other words, you canít fool this powerful search machine. The words you use have to be displayed within content, and not just on the page itself.